From Firefighting to Fire Prevention

Any IT professional who has been part of a DevOps team understands that firefighting is a major part of your job description. When everything falls apart, you’re right in the thick of it trying to get to the root of the problem to fix it. This can be a very stressful and frustrating experience, but knowing how to tackle firefighting as efficiently and effectively as possible will shorten the time it takes to resume operations. We’ve designed track II, “From firefighting to fire prevention,” at Elevate to help you do just that.

While each session on track II will feature a different topic and unique perspective from industry experts, I’ve highlighted the three talks that will lead-off track II every morning at the conference. On Tuesday, Eric Sigler of Pager Duty will deliver his talk, “How to have a (relatively) stress free time during an incident.” Sigler believes that technology practitioners in DevOps teams can learn a lot from successful incident responses in other industries. Throughout the talk, Sigler will cover several patterns and processes that any company can apply in detail.

If you’ve ever had trouble managing, reporting, and staying ahead of a large volume of data, you want to join the session on Wednesday morning, where Robert Cox and Karan Kumar of Instart Logic will be delivering their talk, “Switch from Reactive to Self-Healing Operations.” Robert and Karan will break down the approach their organization has taken to manage operational data, and the results they have achieved since implementing a dynamic operational framework to preempt potential issues. Don’t settle for a reactive stance filled with noise and alerts that negatively affect triage. Get informed on the latest strategies for pulling crucial operational information from large amounts of raw data.

On the final morning of Elevate, you’ll learn about a use case for performance monitoring from Norwegian Cruise Line. Vamshi Dudi, Web Operations Administrator for Norwegian Cruise Line, will take you through exactly how his company was able to quickly resolve website performance and availability issues using synthetic and RUM monitoring techniques. Aware that many IT teams often struggle with false positives, Vamshi will also share some tips on how to deal with those as well. Be sure to attend his talk, “Continuous Monitoring & Dealing with False Positives” on Thursday.